Ethical and Legal Guidance for Mental Health Practitioners Who Wish to Conduct Research in a Private Practice Setting

Mental health practitioners, even when they have research training, rarely contribute to the scientific literature. One reason for this may be that they need help addressing the ethical and legal issues they encounter as they contemplate undertaking research in a clinical practice setting. To address that need, we offer several types of guidance for conducting research in a private practice setting in a way that meets high ethical and legal standards. We describe the situations in which ethical review of a research proposal by a federally registered institutional review board (IRB) is legally required, and identify alternate mechanisms that practitioners can use to obtain an ethical review when a formal IRB review is not required by law. We discuss legal and ethical requirements of conducting single-case studies in a practice setting. We provide a rationale, and free and inexpensive options, for obtaining a formal certificate of training in human subjects research. And we offer guidance for obtaining informed consent and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) authorization from research participants. We conclude with a brief discussion of other legal and professional issues to consider when conducting research in private practice.     

Targeting Co-Sleeping in Children With Anxiety Disorders Using a Modified Bedtime Pass Intervention: A Case Series Using a Changing Criterion Design

Children with anxiety disorders experience high rates of sleep-related problems, with co-sleeping and resistance to sleeping independently being among the more frequent problems reported. Although extinction-based behavioral sleep interventions have repeatedly been shown to be highly effective for treating bedtime resistance, the primary obstacle to their implementation is parent discomfort with these procedures. The bedtime pass intervention was developed to minimize extinction bursts when implementing extinction procedures for childhood sleep problems. Several studies have found this intervention to be effective for treating bedtime resistance behaviors, but not co-sleeping specifically, in nonclinical samples of children. The current paper describes the use of a modified bedtime pass procedure to target problematic co-sleeping and related bedtime resistance behaviors in two children with anxiety disorders who presented for treatment at an outpatient pediatric anxiety specialty clinic. A changing criterion, single subject methodology was used to evaluate the effectiveness of this procedure. Data indicate that both children were able to transition from co-sleeping with parents every night, to sleeping independently, with relatively limited need for contact with parents at night during the intervention. These findings extend the data for the bedtime pass procedure to both co-sleeping and children with anxiety disorders. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed given the limited guidance for treating comorbid sleep problems in anxious children. Strengths and limitations of the data being drawn from a clinical treatment setting are also discussed.     

A Dual Process Model of Attitudes towards Immigration: Person × Residential Area Effects in a National Sample

This research took a person × situation approach to predicting prejudice by looking at how social worldviews interact with real‐world environmental factors to predict how people respond to immigrants within their local area. Taking a Dual Process Motivational approach, we hypothesized that a higher proportion of immigrants in the local community would be associated with negative attitudes toward immigration for respondents high in dangerous world beliefs. Conversely, we hypothesized that living in a highly affluent (as opposed to socioeconomically deprived) community would be associated with negative attitudes toward immigration for respondents high in competitive world beliefs. Both hypotheses were supported using regional information derived from national census data combined with representative survey data from a large telephone sample conducted in New Zealand (N = 6,489). These findings support the proposition that individual differences interact with specific features of the environment to predict people's levels of prejudice in distinct ways.     

More than a feeling: discrete emotions mediate the relationship between relative deprivation and reactions to workplace furloughs

A key insight from investigations of individual relative deprivation (IRD) is that people can experience objective disadvantages differently. In this study, university faculty (N = 953) who reported greater IRD in response to a mandatory furlough (i.e., involuntary pay reductions) were more likely to (a) voice options designed to improve the university (voice), (b) consider leaving their job (exit), and (c) neglect their work responsibilities (neglect), but were (d) less likely to express loyalty to the university (loyalty). Consistent with the emotions literature, (a) anger mediated the relationship between IRD and voice, (b) fear between IRD and exit, (c) sadness between IRD and neglect, and (d) gratitude between IRD and loyalty. IRD was inversely associated with self-reported physical and mental health via these different emotional pathways. These results show how discrete emotions can explain responses to IRD and, in turn, contribute to organizational viability and the health of its members.     

Transfer of contextual stimulus function via equivalence class development

In a conditional discrimination, 6 college students arranged six Cyrillic letters into groups of three based upon which of two additional Cyrillic letters (contextual stimuli) was present. All subjects demonstrated symmetry and transitivity within each class of equivalent stimuli. In a second conditional discrimination, two more Cyrillic letters were related to each contextual stimulus. Testing of symmetrical and transitive relations between the original contextual stimulus and the two new ones confirmed the development of two three-member classes of contextual stimuli. Subsequent tests demonstrated that the new contextual stimuli controlled the previously trained sample-comparison relations for all subjects.     

Meal patterns following changes in procurement cost for rats with fornix transection

The purpose of the present study was to explore the effects of a varied procurement cost on the foraging behavior of rats with fornix transection. An operant analog of foraging requirements was used to examine the feeding patterns of the animals under free feeding, low procurement cost (FR5), and high procurement cost (FR80) situations, in an environment with minimal sensory distraction. It was found that animals with fornix transection did not differ from control rats in general consumption. Both groups were also able to adapt their feeding behavior to the varied procurement cost. As the procurement cost increased, the number of meals consumed decreased while the meal duration increased. The meal patterns themselves were different for the fornix transected animals and the control group. Animals with fornix transections ate more meals over the course of a day than did control animals; their meals were of a longer duration, and their intermeal intervals were shorter than those of control animals. During the course of a meal, the rats with fornix transections took a larger number of breaks, during which they drank, explored, or engaged in activities other than eating. These differences in the feeding patterns were seen across all procurement cost levels. The data support the possibility of hippocampal involvement in behavioral organization or sequencing.     

Response variation in instrumental extinction in rats with fornix transections

The present experiment examined spatial and response variation interpretations of the large difference in magnitude between operant and instrumental extinction deficits seen in hipocampally damaged animals. Latency measures and detailed behaviors of rats with fornix transections were compared to those of control rats during acquisition and extinction in an enriched spatial runway. Control rats, in comparison to rats with fornix transections, exhibited larger increases in start box, runway, and goal box latencies, but no spatial gradients were found. Control rats also exhibited less goal persistence and more response variation following the transition to extinction. The results suggest no fundamental difference between operant and instrumental deficits following hippocampal damage, but an interaction between strategies employed and traditional response measures.